Opinions on the Ulti-Max?

[jaymz]

Also it says right in it's description that it is considered a PA because of it's small size (specifically under 20ft at a height of 16ft though it IS 20ft tall to the top of the tubes). If that is the Case then the Enforcer should ALSO be considered a PA since it is also under 20ft in size (19ft 7in).



Edit - Otherwise It is a robot since you sit in a cockpit and you do not wear it as you would a PA.

The line between power armor and robots is kinda murky but the one clear line is single occupant/multiple occupants.

I have never seen any power armor listed even the mini robot triax modes that had multiple occupants all are single person units. Robot vehicles typically have at least a pilot and a gunner and sometimes more. There may be a few robot vehicles with only one pilot but there are nothing listed as power armor that has multiple occupants.

Point being? Power Armours are worn. It says right in it's own description the SIZE it why its considered one. I didn't just make that up. It says nothing about being single occupancy. A robot is a robot is a robot. Size is irrelevant. You sit in a cockpit. That is a Robot. You wear a power armour. You just said yourself "even the mini robot tTiax models", of which there is only one The Ulti-Max. Everything everything else is "worn" in some fashion. It also says in it's own description that many consider it a robot and not a PA at all. Many consider the GB to be a Robot since it is so heavily armoured. Does that make it a robot?

Compare it to what it should be compared too and that ISN'T traditional PAs let alone the GB.

[glitterboy2098]

its called a power armor, but it has the size and traits of a robot. obviously there is some reason for that.

my choice to have it use a cockpit, but have the upper limbs controlled by a bodyreading interface seemed like a reasonable compromise.

i use the Avatar AMPsuit now as an example, because it fits what i'd envisioned better than the ones i'd used before that film. hell, the AMP suit is roughly the same size and design as an ulti-max though much less armed or armored.
http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/ ... y_Platform
Arms operate in a directly scaled relationship to the operator’s arms, which allows better spatial positioning of the hands. The fingers and thumb are in direct 1:1 ratio. The servo armature has force feedback, and resists the movement of the operator’s arms when the suit's limbs meet an obstacle. The operator can "feel" what the suit is doing. It is said that the suit can be operated in full darkness, by a skilled driver, by "feel" alone. The legs are actuated by foot-pedals which amplify on an even larger ratio. In fact the leg sensors work slightly differently than the arms. Due to the confining spatial envelope around the feet and legs of the operator, the pedals cannot move in long strides, even on a scaled relationship. Instead, they sense the force and direction of the input and the on board computer triggers a corresponding programmed movement of the legs. So the operator creates pressure and direction "cues" which trigger leg movements. The suit executes the "intention" of the pilot, calculating terrain factors and momentum to perform balanced movement.[2]

this would let it be defined as a powered armor (because it reads the pilot's movements), but not tire out the pilot (because the legs use a robot type control set up)

[jaymz]

GB - but thats you houseruling it. The description of the Ultimax itself states otherwise. It states you sit at a control console. That's it. No special motion capture equipemt. No movment mimicing. A control Console. A cockpit. Like a robot.

[kaid]

GB - but thats you houseruling it. The description of the Ultimax itself states otherwise. It states you sit at a control console. That's it. No special motion capture equipemt. No movment mimicing. A control Console. A cockpit. Like a robot.

The description also calls it power armor. Frankly it and the few others like it are kinda in their own neither fish nor fowl category. It probably should be lumped in with robot vehicles with a few other suits mostly triax models but it is considered power armor for some reason.

Really for me power armor would be things like the glitterboy or sampson a big set of armor that you are wearing that mechanically augments the pilot. Seems like most of the power armor/not power armor stuff is triax design small single pilot units but ones you sit at like a robot not strap on like armor.

Still every book it has been listed in the ultimax and ultimax2 gets lumped in with power armor not robot vehicles.

[jaymz]

GB - but thats you houseruling it. The description of the Ultimax itself states otherwise. It states you sit at a control console. That's it. No special motion capture equipemt. No movment mimicing. A control Console. A cockpit. Like a robot.

The description also calls it power armor. Frankly it and the few others like it are kinda in their own neither fish nor fowl category. It probably should be lumped in with robot vehicles with a few other suits mostly triax models but it is considered power armor for some reason.

Really for me power armor would be things like the glitterboy or sampson a big set of armor that you are wearing that mechanically augments the pilot. Seems like most of the power armor/not power armor stuff is triax design small single pilot units but ones you sit at like a robot not strap on like armor.

Still every book it has been listed in the ultimax and ultimax2 gets lumped in with power armor not robot vehicles.

Actually the Ultimax is the smallest thing that is "piloted" Everything else is worn in some fashion.

[glitterboy2098]

GB - but thats you houseruling it. The description of the Ultimax itself states otherwise. It states you sit at a control console. That's it. No special motion capture equipemt. No movment mimicing. A control Console. A cockpit. Like a robot.

and motion capture gear could easily be part of said 'control console'. hell, look at the AMP suit cockpit. you have a control console, HUD, and so on. plus two metal sleeves for controlling the arms on either side of the seat.

remember that a 'control console' does not automatically mean joysticks
in a suit like a SAMAS you don't have screens and buttons consoles. for most of the functions, your relying on voice commands or eye tracking. for the rest you could resort to hand motions. the ultimax is big enough to allow you to put the pilot in a non-conformal control area, but a motion reading system still give better response times and control at that size than a more fighter/tank style set up like a larger robot uses.
and i'm not house ruling (since i'm not actually changing anything). i'm just providing additional information as to what something looks like to fill in an unsubscribed part of the setting. something every GM has to do. i just chose not to house rule away a bit of the ultimax's fluff to try and create a wider gap between PA and robots.

[jaymz]

i just chose not to house rule away a bit of the ultimax's fluff to try and create a wider gap between PA and robots.

You mean the fluff that explicitly says the Ultimax is only considered a PA due to it's size and no other reason? Nothing is house ruled away. If anything it's just uses something many other robots have. What you are proposing isn't demonstrated in any other units that I am aware of. The closest might be the Jager but even then the arms are enclosed and don't likely move much at all....

[Killer Cyborg]

i just chose not to house rule away a bit of the ultimax's fluff to try and create a wider gap between PA and robots.

You mean the fluff that explicitly says the Ultimax is only considered a PA due to it's size and no other reason? Nothing is house ruled away. If anything it's just uses something many other robots have. What you are proposing isn't demonstrated in any other units that I am aware of. The closest might be the Jager but even then the arms are enclosed and don't likely move much at all....

The Ultimax IS considred to be a power armor for the reason of size.
But it IS still considered to be power armor.

So, for me, that means that comparing it to other power armor is appropriate.
Then again, if it stacks up favorably to bots like the Enforcer, that's pretty cool too.

[Alrik Vas]

Yeah, i don't even understand why the argument is happening.

[jaymz]

i just chose not to house rule away a bit of the ultimax's fluff to try and create a wider gap between PA and robots.

You mean the fluff that explicitly says the Ultimax is only considered a PA due to it's size and no other reason? Nothing is house ruled away. If anything it's just uses something many other robots have. What you are proposing isn't demonstrated in any other units that I am aware of. The closest might be the Jager but even then the arms are enclosed and don't likely move much at all....

The Ultimax IS considred to be a power armor for the reason of size.
But it IS still considered to be power armor.

So, for me, that means that comparing it to other power armor is appropriate.
Then again, if it stacks up favorably to bots like the Enforcer, that's pretty cool too.

My only question the is why isn't the Enforcer treated the same way as it is also under 20ft in size just like the Ultimax?

[Zamion138]

The enforcer has has i belive 3 people inside of it and medium missiles.
Other than that its also from the main book from the start as a robot, there is no these 1 or 2 things make a robot distinction.
Its not important.

[Nightmask]

Yeah, i don't even understand why the argument is happening.

Because there are always going to be people disagreeing over classifications and whether or not the book is right or if what's written needs to be rejected (or demand it always be accepted no matter how illogical because 'it's in the book').

[Killer Cyborg]

i just chose not to house rule away a bit of the ultimax's fluff to try and create a wider gap between PA and robots.

You mean the fluff that explicitly says the Ultimax is only considered a PA due to it's size and no other reason? Nothing is house ruled away. If anything it's just uses something many other robots have. What you are proposing isn't demonstrated in any other units that I am aware of. The closest might be the Jager but even then the arms are enclosed and don't likely move much at all....

The Ultimax IS considred to be a power armor for the reason of size.
But it IS still considered to be power armor.

So, for me, that means that comparing it to other power armor is appropriate.
Then again, if it stacks up favorably to bots like the Enforcer, that's pretty cool too.

My only question the is why isn't the Enforcer treated the same way as it is also under 20ft in size just like the Ultimax?

Probably because it's (typically) got a multiple person crew.
It's hard to call something "armor" when you've got two people "wearing" on suit.

Also, although the Enforcer is technically under 20', the flavor text describing the bot refers to it being 20' tall.
So for informal purposes, it seems that they round it up to 20'.

[Eashamahel]

It just LOOKS badass.

That being said the gun should probably have been upped to be on par with the Shemarrian Railgun damage wise in my opnion.

Really at 1d6x 10 is pretty standard type damage for power armor/robots. The vast majority of robot/power armor main guns do 1d4x10 or 1d6x10 especially for something the size of the ultimax.

Except for the fat the gun is actually bigger than anything else barring the Guns on the Spider Skull Walker. I still think 2d6x10 would have made more sense and really showed how badass it was compared to other things. Really it isn't all that much better than a UAR-1 enforcer. It isn't that much smaller and the Enforecer actually has more firepower overall since it carries SRMs and MRMs as well as MMs.

'Big' guns on Robots in Rifts generally cap out at 1D6x10 and OCCASIONALLY 2D4x10. It's been like that forever, it makes absolutely no sense, and it's probably never going to change. Robots bring damage and range through missiles, all of their 'anti-dragon/tank/armour/other giant big monsters stuff' cannon and railguns are actually 'anti-light/medium infantry' weapons, they do not make sense and do not have even close to reasonable weight/damage ratios.

Early Examples of this include the Titan Combat Robot, which has an arm mounted railgun weighing 900lbs (with no nuclear pack, as it's hooked into the robots power supply), with a 4000ft range doing 1D4x10. So it's roughly the size of 9 SAMAS railguns for the EXACT same damage and range, and the Enforcer's Railgun, which needs to be a bit better than the Titan one as it's CS make, and thus ONLY weighs 700lbs and does 50% more damage than the SAMAS railgun at the same range, so it's ONLY 7 times bigger for 50% more damage. Diminishing returns, much?

Of course, the ALL-TIME CHAMPION of ludicrous numbers HAS to go to the Death-Knight Assault Robot's Particle Beam Cannon! Anyone remember this thing from Mercenaries? It does 1D6x10(wait for it) +10MD! Wild I say! And what is the premium it pays for that 10 points over what the NG-P7 Particle Beam Rifle, a 20lb hand held weapon of the same type that does the standard 1D6x10? Well, you'll be glad to know it only weighs ONE-POINT-FOUR TONS. That's not all though, even hooked to a robot's nuclear energy source, it has a restricted number of times it can fire before running the bot out of energy. Even the super advanced Naruni can't break through that 1D6x10MD barrier!

Only the Glitterboy was ever imagined to have a Robot/Power Armour beyond that range, it's what makes the thing so special, and I have no doubt that anytime someone handed in a design where something (even something vastly larger) did even comparable damage, it was 'edited' back down to standard (1D6x10) levels.

The enforcer has has i belive 3 people inside of it and medium missiles.
Other than that its also from the main book from the start as a robot, there is no these 1 or 2 things make a robot distinction.
Its not important.

The Enforcer Crew is 1 or 2, but can be controlled just as easily by one person. Still, multiple crew, robot.

Another thing that makes the Ulti-Max a power armour, besides being called a power armour, is that it has Power Armour (Not Robot) standard features.

[Alrik Vas]

Oooooooh. Burned! Yeah i got nothin'. Guess i'll stay outta this now.

[kaid]

HAHAH good demonstration of the wackiness that is weapon size to damage in rifts. I think the damage is more a game balance decision which while it leads to some wacky things if you think about them to hard makes sense from a game design perspective.

The glitterboy is the iconic rifts power armor and its armor/weapon are the top of the heap and most of their design decisions have been to maintain this. For a while you started to see some creep up in power especially with south america 1 and 2 but there has been a concious decision to back away from that and now you rarely see things that do more than 1d6x10.

Now this would have been fine had they not let rifles creep into that category of damage too. They really should have kept the max man portable weapon damage capped at 6d6 MDC. Now you have the high end man portable weapons and the vast majority of vehicular weapons in the 1d4 x10 and 1d6x10 range.

The really wild stuff is like one of the free quebec glitterboy boom gun replacements that does 2d6 damage. That is not 2d6x10 it is 2d6 damage. I still cannot fathom why any commander would swap out a boomgun to mount something that does midrange pistol level damage.

All that said it probably is for the best most weapons are held down to that range with only some outliers doing more. Rifts is a deadly deadly game as it is especially for any kind of infantry and while 1d6x10 +10 may not sound that impressive for a weapon that huge this thing can still pretty much one shot any infantry not wearing the heaviest of heavy body armor and those lucky few will not likely survive more than 2 blasts. This is one reason I was never a fan of letting normal hand held weapons do the 1d6x10 the previous heavy blast when the game first came out for man portable stuff was 1d4x10 and most infantry armor can take at least one shot of that before you die if it hits for full damage. Once you start getting weapons doing 1d6x10 that are hand held wearing light/medium body armor becomes suicide as even if it is fully repaired may not keep you alive from one shot.

[Levi]

I have always like the Ulti-max as well. As everyone else has stated, the mini-missiles, plus force field, plus laser, plus decent MDC, plus rail gun makes it very versatile. And for it's size pretty powerful over all. I have still always felt the rail gun should do at least 2d4x10 MD. I think 2d6x10 or 3d4x10 would be a perfect fit and allow it to live up to the hype.

[DhAkael]

-meh-
I put it down to Author fiat and nothing else.
Kevin says the BOOMGUN is the ony weapon that can bring the pain... his sandbox; his rules.
...
Which is why many new-gamers avoid Rifts like the plague.
Re; "This makes no [censored] sense!!! Mecha scaled weapons doing damage & range of a RIFLE?! and nothing can go over the cap of this stupid standing target-dummy's SINGLE WEAPON? Okay, I'ma gonna go and do GURPS/Exalted/anything else."

For the record, I LOVE Rifts, but I still have to laugh hysterically at the brainless "game ballance" (re; nobody upstages Kevy's precious GB) issues with dah gunz.

There is no justifying it. It is just plain stupid.

[Killer Cyborg]

I have always like the Ulti-max as well. As everyone else has stated, the mini-missiles, plus force field, plus laser, plus decent MDC, plus rail gun makes it very versatile. And for it's size pretty powerful over all. I have still always felt the rail gun should do at least 2d4x10 MD. I think 2d6x10 or 3d4x10 would be a perfect fit and allow it to live up to the hype.

2d4x10 MD is the amount of damage that one of the 1.2 ton rail guns on the 28' tall Spider Skull Walker inflicts on a burst.
The Ulti-Max's rail gun only weighs 350 lbs, 750 lbs if you want to include both ammo drums in the overall weight.

Boosting the Ulti-Max's gun up to the damage levels of the Spider Skull Walker would only compound the problem of the "the bigger the gun, the weaker it is" syndrome in the game.
Unless you change all the other weapon damages as well.
Which, really, should ideally be done.

[flatline]

I have always like the Ulti-max as well. As everyone else has stated, the mini-missiles, plus force field, plus laser, plus decent MDC, plus rail gun makes it very versatile. And for it's size pretty powerful over all. I have still always felt the rail gun should do at least 2d4x10 MD. I think 2d6x10 or 3d4x10 would be a perfect fit and allow it to live up to the hype.

2d4x10 MD is the amount of damage that one of the 1.2 ton rail guns on the 28' tall Spider Skull Walker inflicts on a burst.
The Ulti-Max's rail gun only weighs 350 lbs, 750 lbs if you want to include both ammo drums in the overall weight.

Boosting the Ulti-Max's gun up to the damage levels of the Spider Skull Walker would only compound the problem of the "the bigger the gun, the weaker it is" syndrome in the game.
Unless you change all the other weapon damages as well.
Which, really, should ideally be done.

It's fairly easy to add an extra '0' to the multiplier of the big guns on giant vehicles. Make them scary again!

It was always silly that a direct hit on a grunt in armor could survive a direct hit from a big vehicle mounted gun.

--flatline

[kaid]

I have always like the Ulti-max as well. As everyone else has stated, the mini-missiles, plus force field, plus laser, plus decent MDC, plus rail gun makes it very versatile. And for it's size pretty powerful over all. I have still always felt the rail gun should do at least 2d4x10 MD. I think 2d6x10 or 3d4x10 would be a perfect fit and allow it to live up to the hype.

2d4x10 MD is the amount of damage that one of the 1.2 ton rail guns on the 28' tall Spider Skull Walker inflicts on a burst.
The Ulti-Max's rail gun only weighs 350 lbs, 750 lbs if you want to include both ammo drums in the overall weight.

Boosting the Ulti-Max's gun up to the damage levels of the Spider Skull Walker would only compound the problem of the "the bigger the gun, the weaker it is" syndrome in the game.
Unless you change all the other weapon damages as well.
Which, really, should ideally be done.

It's fairly easy to add an extra '0' to the multiplier of the big guns on giant vehicles. Make them scary again!

It was always silly that a direct hit on a grunt in armor could survive a direct hit from a big vehicle mounted gun.

--flatline

The ironic thing is back at the start most infantry could not survive a hit from one of the big vehicle guns baring bad rolls. When most people were sporting armors with 60 or less and the heaviest armor had 80 MDC those damage levels are plenty scary. The problem is when normal rifles started doing 1d6x10 damage all the body armors had to get ratcheted up in protection or the battlefield simply is not survivable which then weakened the potency of the big mech cannons in relative terms.

I really don't have a problem with the max weapon damage being 3d6x10 by the boom guns it gives you a frame to work with balancing wise. The biggest problem really came from the power creep from the pulse laser rifles. Prior to that the biggest man portable weapon was doing 6d6 damage so probably high teens low 20s damage on average. So even vs heavy plasma cannons generally speaking even the worst body armor like the plastic man will likely survive one maybe two hits.

Once the pulse lasers came out and you started seeing 1d6x10 out of a rifle your plastic man armor now has a 50/50 chance of instant death off a single burst. Most light/medium armor can be one shot killed by these rifles.

The two main ways to deal with this are pretty much either nerf down some of the man portable weapon damages or raise the scaling on everything. Rifts kinda split the difference they reined in weapon damages a lot just look at the newer books most newer weapons have dropped back a notch damage wise so 4d6 is a pretty common rifle damage on the newer things. They also have upped the armor available where before the max was about 80 for heavy armor 100-120 is now not terribly uncommon.

Really other than a few lapses such as south america 2 for all the knocks palladium has taken for being munchkin they really have kept the damage/armor mudflation fairly well in check over a long period of time.

[dragonfett]

What I hate about the art work is that they show these huge barrels for guns that do 1d6 x 10 MD on a burst of 40 - 80 rounds and the ammo drum has enough rounds for 100-200 bursts. I don't mind the barrels being that big doing that kind of damage, just don't call it a burst. Do a single shot like a real cannon does, or make the barrel look smaller and keep the burst damage.

Also, as for size, the Titan Exploration Robot (or was it the Light Combat model) that was a single person that comes in at 16 feet.

[Killer Cyborg]

I have always like the Ulti-max as well. As everyone else has stated, the mini-missiles, plus force field, plus laser, plus decent MDC, plus rail gun makes it very versatile. And for it's size pretty powerful over all. I have still always felt the rail gun should do at least 2d4x10 MD. I think 2d6x10 or 3d4x10 would be a perfect fit and allow it to live up to the hype.

2d4x10 MD is the amount of damage that one of the 1.2 ton rail guns on the 28' tall Spider Skull Walker inflicts on a burst.
The Ulti-Max's rail gun only weighs 350 lbs, 750 lbs if you want to include both ammo drums in the overall weight.

Boosting the Ulti-Max's gun up to the damage levels of the Spider Skull Walker would only compound the problem of the "the bigger the gun, the weaker it is" syndrome in the game.
Unless you change all the other weapon damages as well.
Which, really, should ideally be done.

It's fairly easy to add an extra '0' to the multiplier of the big guns on giant vehicles. Make them scary again!

It was always silly that a direct hit on a grunt in armor could survive a direct hit from a big vehicle mounted gun.

--flatline

The ironic thing is back at the start most infantry could not survive a hit from one of the big vehicle guns baring bad rolls. When most people were sporting armors with 60 or less and the heaviest armor had 80 MDC those damage levels are plenty scary. The problem is when normal rifles started doing 1d6x10 damage all the body armors had to get ratcheted up in protection or the battlefield simply is not survivable which then weakened the potency of the big mech cannons in relative terms.

I really don't have a problem with the max weapon damage being 3d6x10 by the boom guns it gives you a frame to work with balancing wise. The biggest problem really came from the power creep from the pulse laser rifles. Prior to that the biggest man portable weapon was doing 6d6 damage so probably high teens low 20s damage on average. So even vs heavy plasma cannons generally speaking even the worst body armor like the plastic man will likely survive one maybe two hits.

Once the pulse lasers came out and you started seeing 1d6x10 out of a rifle your plastic man armor now has a 50/50 chance of instant death off a single burst. Most light/medium armor can be one shot killed by these rifles.

The two main ways to deal with this are pretty much either nerf down some of the man portable weapon damages or raise the scaling on everything. Rifts kinda split the difference they reined in weapon damages a lot just look at the newer books most newer weapons have dropped back a notch damage wise so 4d6 is a pretty common rifle damage on the newer things. They also have upped the armor available where before the max was about 80 for heavy armor 100-120 is now not terribly uncommon.

Really other than a few lapses such as south america 2 for all the knocks palladium has taken for being munchkin they really have kept the damage/armor mudflation fairly well in check over a long period of time.

I think that power creep is still pretty bad, but I agree that the discrepancy with infantry vs. artillery originated with pulse lasers, more or less.

My solution would be to nerf infantry-level stuff, rather than increase the vehicles/robots end of things.
I'd rather divide small arms and armor by 10 than to multiply the vehicles and such by 10.
Simply because virtually everybody has trouble even envisioning even 1d6 MD, what that kind of firepower would entail, and what it would be like to witness it or to wield it.
Damages like 1d6x10 MD are fairly unfathomable. It's the equivalent of 10-20 sticks of dynamite, coming form the barrel of a single rifle, in one pulse.

[wyrmraker]

What I hate about rail guns in Rifts is how they all, with 3 exceptions (GB, Shadow Boy, and the NG-R50) act as machine guns, strictly by author's fiat. Sorry, but the power levels required to get 40 magnetic pulses in under a second is staggering compared to one massive pulse to drive a large projectile. Yes, I know machine guns are cool. But a little sense is needed.

And then the artwork shows the barrel of the Ulti-Max's rail gun being approximately 4 inches in diameter. Granted, I am doing a rough approximation based on the scale, but the point remains. How is a 40 round burst from a bore of 4 inches not shredding literally everything it's pointed at, instead of being sucked up by the average CS armor?

All that having been said, I still love the Ulti-Max. The style is impeccable (can't stand the look of the Ulti-Max 2), the weapons are good, the armor and force field are excellent. As I said before, a few TW mods, combined with a talented operator or psi-tek, and that small robot becomes something truly terrifying.

[dragonfett]

It was the Titan Combat Recon Robot that I was thinking of.

[wyrmraker]

I always look at power armor as the baseline model. Revisions always occur and upgrades are implemented over time. That said Palladium books have also always sucked when it came to math and balance isn't something any player of Rifts should expect from the game. I upgrade equipment often reflecting upgrades and variants and sometimes flat out house rule stupidity in books (like massive guns the size of buildings doing less damage than a soldier's rifle).

Numbers in this game mean little to us in our games. Concept is what matters and adjustments will be made when needed (and often). I never understood why so many players stress out over rules that make no sense or do not work ... change them!

The poster above mentioned rail guns. This is also something we have made house rules for. In general we upped the total damages for them. Basically we added another category to the single shot, short burst, long burst , full melee burst rules and have a rail gun version as well. We wanted to preserve the flavor they add to Rifts and to make a 100+lb gun worth using over a light laser which often does more damage. We simply added a little more sting to them and more options of use similar to machineguns. The added abilities for spray and cover fire add far greater utility over smaller guns if used correctly and creates reasons for their use.

Sounds like your group has the situation well in hand. Bravo!

[flatline]

I always look at power armor as the baseline model. Revisions always occur and upgrades are implemented over time. That said Palladium books have also always sucked when it came to math and balance isn't something any player of Rifts should expect from the game. I upgrade equipment often reflecting upgrades and variants and sometimes flat out house rule stupidity in books (like massive guns the size of buildings doing less damage than a soldier's rifle).

Numbers in this game mean little to us in our games. Concept is what matters and adjustments will be made when needed (and often).

I've played in games where your character sheet had your weapons and armor listed without any stats at all and it improved the game for everyone. When there are numbers to focus on, then numbers become the focus. When the numbers aren't there, then the focus stays on the story and setting.

The GM said he was handling all the dice rolling, but I don't think I ever saw him reach for his dice. And yet things worked out just fine.

--flatline

[Alrik Vas]

I always look at power armor as the baseline model. Revisions always occur and upgrades are implemented over time. That said Palladium books have also always sucked when it came to math and balance isn't something any player of Rifts should expect from the game. I upgrade equipment often reflecting upgrades and variants and sometimes flat out house rule stupidity in books (like massive guns the size of buildings doing less damage than a soldier's rifle).

Numbers in this game mean little to us in our games. Concept is what matters and adjustments will be made when needed (and often).

I've played in games where your character sheet had your weapons and armor listed without any stats at all and it improved the game for everyone. When there are numbers to focus on, then numbers become the focus. When the numbers aren't there, then the focus stays on the story and setting.

The GM said he was handling all the dice rolling, but I don't think I ever saw him reach for his dice. And yet things worked out just fine.

--flatline

It's always nice when that happens. Even when there's a lot of action (which is hard to do "diceless" unless everyone implicitly trusts your GM). I've never had an experience sans rolls that good. As much as i love story and character interaction, i also like improving the numbers on my sheet, and using said figures to great effect, born of my own strategy. It's also an important part of the game.

[Eashamahel]

To consider, circa the rulebook era many armours had LESS than 60MDC, 50 MDC was pretty much the standard for a good armour, about half of the CS troops you ran into were wearing CA-2 (by the common units descriptions in the sourcebook. Also consider that many rifles in that era were capable of doing WAY more damage then rifles now, both the Wilks 447 and the JA-11 were capable of doing 15D6 in a single attack (though I think that number comes down a bit, something like 9D6, when the Conversion book came out).

It's actually a really interesting look at Armour when Rifts first came around. If you consider that the average rifle around that time did 2D6, that meant that damage was around 7MD (single shot), 14MD (short burst, 1 attack), 35MD (long burst, 1 attack), and 70MD (Entire Magazine, 2 attacks). That meant that when wearing light armour meant you could expect to survive single hits and short burst, as well as most pistol fire, medium armour could survive a long burst, and only heavy armour allowed you to survive a full magazine's worth of fire. So original infantry body armour was really only made to allow you to survive glancing/single hits, or keep you alive that ONE TIME you REALLY got hit. Heavier, high quality rifles, like the above JA-11 (using Ion) and Wilks 447 doing 3D6 could expect to saw down pretty much any infantry when emptying the clip/getting a clear shot. When the Conversion book changed these numbers (which I agreed with) it meant that CS CA-1 Heavy Armour would allow the Coalitions heavier troops to survive a full clip burst/completely being caught in the open from a good weapon.

It's important to note that the original rulebook doesn't apply any negatives for attempting to dodge gunfire/energy blasts, which is important. If most infantry rifles can kill most infantry, then you had best be ready to duck, dive and dodge when the gunfire starts! Later, when weapons actually had less potential for damage or at least less potential to just flat out kill people, body armour MD also went UP, and dodging gunfire became more or less impossible, leading to a somewhat less realistic, stand up and shoot system.


As a random note, now that I am thinking of it, it was also an interesting design choice to give the CS the highest armour, but also inherently limit their guns damage to levels where the GM rarely has the OPTION of just rolling a D20 and removing a character. This is most obvious in the C-12, which right in it's description says that it is limited to a 'Burst of 5', or a Short Burst (double damage), meaning 8D6 was the highest it could roll, for an average damage of about 28, meaning most times a PC would get a second chance to hide/dodge/whatever and GM's couldn't just full clip characters down with that weapon. The C-10 could fire the full auto, but was limited to the 2D6MD damage. Only the C-14 had the best of both, with it's 3D6MD, and by standard squad layouts (first sourcebook) it was generally only given to heavy troopers, or to put it otherwise, was for tough ass-kicking NPCs.


Anyways, that's all just me meandering on the original gun damage in Rifts. Infantry were damned good at killing infantry, and exposing yourself to the least risk was huge, because any target you could see was very possibly a casualty. Robot vehichles tended to damage on the higher end, often heavy rifle damage for energy turrets, but those turrets usually could not fire at full auto (for instance, the smaller titan bot's only turret did 3D6, with a Rate of Fire: Equal to the total number of hand to hand attacks). The tradeoff was that the Robot had more attacks to fire with continuously, and was more accurate on it's single shots. Still, those rifle-level turrets were usually for ground dispersal of infantry, not fighting anything serious, and they would disperse infantry if you were wearing 35-50MDC armour and each hit did 10MDC, AND you had the option of DODGING that gunfire. It often meant that characters and NPCs would end up running around/away from that fire which was meant to disperse them.

[kaid]

I have always like the Ulti-max as well. As everyone else has stated, the mini-missiles, plus force field, plus laser, plus decent MDC, plus rail gun makes it very versatile. And for it's size pretty powerful over all. I have still always felt the rail gun should do at least 2d4x10 MD. I think 2d6x10 or 3d4x10 would be a perfect fit and allow it to live up to the hype.

2d4x10 MD is the amount of damage that one of the 1.2 ton rail guns on the 28' tall Spider Skull Walker inflicts on a burst.
The Ulti-Max's rail gun only weighs 350 lbs, 750 lbs if you want to include both ammo drums in the overall weight.

Boosting the Ulti-Max's gun up to the damage levels of the Spider Skull Walker would only compound the problem of the "the bigger the gun, the weaker it is" syndrome in the game.
Unless you change all the other weapon damages as well.
Which, really, should ideally be done.

It's fairly easy to add an extra '0' to the multiplier of the big guns on giant vehicles. Make them scary again!

It was always silly that a direct hit on a grunt in armor could survive a direct hit from a big vehicle mounted gun.

--flatline

The ironic thing is back at the start most infantry could not survive a hit from one of the big vehicle guns baring bad rolls. When most people were sporting armors with 60 or less and the heaviest armor had 80 MDC those damage levels are plenty scary. The problem is when normal rifles started doing 1d6x10 damage all the body armors had to get ratcheted up in protection or the battlefield simply is not survivable which then weakened the potency of the big mech cannons in relative terms.

I really don't have a problem with the max weapon damage being 3d6x10 by the boom guns it gives you a frame to work with balancing wise. The biggest problem really came from the power creep from the pulse laser rifles. Prior to that the biggest man portable weapon was doing 6d6 damage so probably high teens low 20s damage on average. So even vs heavy plasma cannons generally speaking even the worst body armor like the plastic man will likely survive one maybe two hits.

Once the pulse lasers came out and you started seeing 1d6x10 out of a rifle your plastic man armor now has a 50/50 chance of instant death off a single burst. Most light/medium armor can be one shot killed by these rifles.

The two main ways to deal with this are pretty much either nerf down some of the man portable weapon damages or raise the scaling on everything. Rifts kinda split the difference they reined in weapon damages a lot just look at the newer books most newer weapons have dropped back a notch damage wise so 4d6 is a pretty common rifle damage on the newer things. They also have upped the armor available where before the max was about 80 for heavy armor 100-120 is now not terribly uncommon.

Really other than a few lapses such as south america 2 for all the knocks palladium has taken for being munchkin they really have kept the damage/armor mudflation fairly well in check over a long period of time.

I think that power creep is still pretty bad, but I agree that the discrepancy with infantry vs. artillery originated with pulse lasers, more or less.

My solution would be to nerf infantry-level stuff, rather than increase the vehicles/robots end of things.
I'd rather divide small arms and armor by 10 than to multiply the vehicles and such by 10.
Simply because virtually everybody has trouble even envisioning even 1d6 MD, what that kind of firepower would entail, and what it would be like to witness it or to wield it.
Damages like 1d6x10 MD are fairly unfathomable. It's the equivalent of 10-20 sticks of dynamite, coming form the barrel of a single rifle, in one pulse.

Yup I have pretty much house ruled the max damage for a normal sized man portable weapon is 6d6 MDC. Now you get the weird russian varients that require the rig to hold up I don't mind those doing power armor level damage because they are big/huge/heavy and unwieldy what you gain in damage output for using them you lose in ability to take cover under a lot of things people not using a gyro mount could use. Once you get that Separation back the weapons vehicles use become at least a bit more consistent with their size. A heavy plasma gun at most does 36 damage and something like the ulti max gun is almost double that for max damage which seems very reasonable.

[Killer Cyborg]

As a random note, now that I am thinking of it, it was also an interesting design choice to give the CS the highest armour, but also inherently limit their guns damage to levels where the GM rarely has the OPTION of just rolling a D20 and removing a character. This is most obvious in the C-12, which right in it's description says that it is limited to a 'Burst of 5', or a Short Burst (double damage), meaning 8D6 was the highest it could roll, for an average damage of about 28, meaning most times a PC would get a second chance to hide/dodge/whatever and GM's couldn't just full clip characters down with that weapon. The C-10 could fire the full auto, but was limited to the 2D6MD damage. Only the C-14 had the best of both, with it's 3D6MD, and by standard squad layouts (first sourcebook) it was generally only given to heavy troopers, or to put it otherwise, was for tough ass-kicking NPCs.

The C-12 actually only did 2d6 per shot; the 4d6 MD setting was a burst setting.
(I did not subscribe to this theory at first, but several LONG online arguments, a book checking, and a personal conversation with Kevin Siembieda changed my mind.
So before you doubt... just consider that it takes a lot of proof for me to change my position, and this was NOT my original view)

Which pretty much supports your point.
Also, the C-14 was nerfed down to Single Shot as early as CWC.

Anyways, that's all just me meandering on the original gun damage in Rifts. Infantry were damned good at killing infantry, and exposing yourself to the least risk was huge, because any target you could see was very possibly a casualty. Robot vehichles tended to damage on the higher end, often heavy rifle damage for energy turrets, but those turrets usually could not fire at full auto (for instance, the smaller titan bot's only turret did 3D6, with a Rate of Fire: Equal to the total number of hand to hand attacks). The tradeoff was that the Robot had more attacks to fire with continuously, and was more accurate on it's single shots. Still, those rifle-level turrets were usually for ground dispersal of infantry, not fighting anything serious, and they would disperse infantry if you were wearing 35-50MDC armour and each hit did 10MDC, AND you had the option of DODGING that gunfire. It often meant that characters and NPCs would end up running around/away from that fire which was meant to disperse them.

[Eashamahel]

The C-12 actually only did 2d6 per shot; the 4d6 MD setting was a burst setting.
(I did not subscribe to this theory at first, but several LONG online arguments, a book checking, and a personal conversation with Kevin Siembieda changed my mind.
So before you doubt... just consider that it takes a lot of proof for me to change my position, and this was NOT my original view):

Really, huh? That's awesome to know! I have wondered back and forth on that question for as long as I have played Rifts, since the math adds up so well, the second setting doing EXACTLY double the single shot damage, the 5 shots=x2 damage, I had never really been able to come up with solid evidence to support that it WAS the burst damage listed (so the three settings are SDC, MD, and 5 round MD burst), but word from 'on high' showing that was the intention seems like enough evidence. The thing that kept me from deciding that was how it worked was always the NG-57, which ALSO had two damage settings, which are CLOSE to double for the second, but has no mention of having pre-set burst fire. Of course, the Sourcebook introduced the CV-212, which has the same damages (2D6 and 4D6) and the same note about bursts of 5, similiar enough it supported the C-12's 4D6 being the burst. Anyways, sorry to get way off topic, but that is very neat to know!

Which pretty much supports your point.
Also, the C-14 was nerfed down to Single Shot as early as CWC.

Yeah, but so was every gun, including the C-12, though I suppose if you figured out that the second damage was the burst damage, then you actually do fire 'Equal to the combined HtH attacks of the user', seeing as how you couldn't fire long bursts with it anyways. Interestingly, the C-10 is still listed as 'Aimed, Burst, Wild' in CWC, but that's probably an oversight, as by then they were trying to make everything either pulse or single shot.


But anyways, the CS being the big bad guys of the original rulebook, were given solid armour for infantry, as well as power armour and robots, but on an infantry level were given lower weapon damage than most for shooting, so that the game was more epic and PCs were rarely insta-smote. This carries over to Power Armour and robots guns, which are less likely to insta-smote characters as well, while many character driven, non-CS weapons could wreck CS soldiers in short order.

Interstingly, this also shows up in the HtH damages of the original Rifts setting as well. CS troopers get vibro blades and claws, or vibro sabres in borgs, doing 1-2D6 damage, whereas PCs get Flaming Swords, Psi-Swords, ect, which vastly outpace most NPC combat damage (the Xiticix are another good example of this, with their 1D6 MD power punches).

[Faceless Dude]

Of course, the ALL-TIME CHAMPION of ludicrous numbers HAS to go to the Death-Knight Assault Robot's Particle Beam Cannon! Anyone remember this thing from Mercenaries? It does 1D6x10(wait for it) +10MD! Wild I say! And what is the premium it pays for that 10 points over what the NG-P7 Particle Beam Rifle, a 20lb hand held weapon of the same type that does the standard 1D6x10? Well, you'll be glad to know it only weighs ONE-POINT-FOUR TONS. That's not all though, even hooked to a robot's nuclear energy source, it has a restricted number of times it can fire before running the bot out of energy. Even the super advanced Naruni can't break through that 1D6x10MD barrier!

First. The mecha knight power armor on the previous page is 2d4x10. Just throwing that out there.

Second, I'll grant that the Death-knight's particle beam damage is lower than it should be. But check the range. Yes, it's SIX THOUSAND FEET. That's 5 TIMES the range of you NG-P7.

It's not always about teh damage, yo

[Eashamahel]

First. The mecha knight power armor on the previous page is 2d4x10. Just throwing that out there.

Second, I'll grant that the Death-knight's particle beam damage is lower than it should be. But check the range. Yes, it's SIX THOUSAND FEET. That's 5 TIMES the range of you NG-P7.

It's not always about teh damage, yo

I am a big supporter of range being a large factor in the game, but there's no way to make that gun even mildly reasonable. that's less than 2km. There is no way any species would ever make a weapon that has that little power, but is that energy intensive and large for that range. I wonder how many short range missiles you could get for that weight with a better range? Maybe the same number of shots you can get with that cannon?

A kick from what?

Haha, good old book to book consistancy. Kind of makes you wonder why they don't have a proof reader? My wife is a product manager at an advertising firm, and everytime she learns more about Palladium the company, she is baffled by how poorly the company seems to be structured and run.

[glitterboy2098]

What I hate about rail guns in Rifts is how they all, with 3 exceptions (GB, Shadow Boy, and the NG-R50) act as machine guns, strictly by author's fiat. Sorry, but the power levels required to get 40 magnetic pulses in under a second is staggering compared to one massive pulse to drive a large projectile. Yes, I know machine guns are cool. But a little sense is needed.

One other thing it says is that rail guns "kick". Not only do rail guns have no recoil at all, but also they were specifically designed to eliminate recoil. Because they operate electromagnetically, there are no moving parts that are capable of recoiling and producing "kick".

actually railguns do have recoil. recoil (the 'kick' of a gun') has nothing to do with firing mechanism, but everything to do with physics. your throwing mass downrange at velocity. therefor you are putting out a force in one direction equal to [mass x velocity], and due to the third law of motion, you experiance that same amount of force in the opposite direction. that's recoil

railguns do have recoil, or 'kick'.. and not that much lower than a regualr gun would have for the same size and speed of projectile. https://www.utexas.edu/research/cem/IEE ... ations.pdf
http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=272

[Killer Cyborg]

The C-12 actually only did 2d6 per shot; the 4d6 MD setting was a burst setting.
(I did not subscribe to this theory at first, but several LONG online arguments, a book checking, and a personal conversation with Kevin Siembieda changed my mind.
So before you doubt... just consider that it takes a lot of proof for me to change my position, and this was NOT my original view):

Really, huh? That's awesome to know! I have wondered back and forth on that question for as long as I have played Rifts, since the math adds up so well, the second setting doing EXACTLY double the single shot damage, the 5 shots=x2 damage, I had never really been able to come up with solid evidence to support that it WAS the burst damage listed (so the three settings are SDC, MD, and 5 round MD burst), but word from 'on high' showing that was the intention seems like enough evidence. The thing that kept me from deciding that was how it worked was always the NG-57, which ALSO had two damage settings, which are CLOSE to double for the second, but has no mention of having pre-set burst fire. Of course, the Sourcebook introduced the CV-212, which has the same damages (2D6 and 4D6) and the same note about bursts of 5, similiar enough it supported the C-12's 4D6 being the burst. Anyways, sorry to get way off topic, but that is very neat to know!

Yeah, the NG-57 was brought up, as was the CV-212 and the CV-213.
Here's some links to the old threads, if you want to read up on it:
viewtopic.php?p=2321488#p2321488
viewtopic.php?p=861910#p861910
viewtopic.php?p=859454#p859454
viewtopic.php?p=444391#p444391

Personally, I was disappointed to find out that the C-12, which I had considered to be one of the most powerful weapons in the game, wasn't even as good as the L-20.
The CS was (and is) repeatedly described as having the best tech on the planet... but their main weapon is outgunned by most other stuff in the books.
My patch to this was to rule that the C-12's 5-shot setting was a pulse instead of a burst, boosting the damage to 1d6x10 MD.
The reason why the CS switched to the CP-40 in my games is because the C-12's 5-shot setting was abused, and the troops tended to chew through ammo a lot faster than the brass would like (60 shots only gets you 12 pulses, so it can go quick!).
That way, the flavor text about the C-12 being "a favorite infantry workhorse" and it being "still a favorite of Commandos and Special Ops" makes some kind of sense, but the existence of the CP-40 also makes sense.
I proposed that change to KS at GenCon 2005, but he seems to have gone with a 3-shot burst setting for 4d6 instead.

So when I wrote up my home-brew CS Arms Company, Patriot Arms Incorporated, the very first thing that I wrote up was a conversion kit that would boost the weapon from a 3-shot burst (or a 5-shot burst, or whatever) to the 5-shot pulse that I think is more appropriate.

Which pretty much supports your point.
Also, the C-14 was nerfed down to Single Shot as early as CWC.

Yeah, but so was every gun, including the C-12, though I suppose if you figured out that the second damage was the burst damage, then you actually do fire 'Equal to the combined HtH attacks of the user', seeing as how you couldn't fire long bursts with it anyways.

Right; you could fire single-shots or 5-shot bursts, and either way it uses one attack.

Interestingly, the C-10 is still listed as 'Aimed, Burst, Wild' in CWC, but that's probably an oversight, as by then they were trying to make everything either pulse or single shot.

Probably an oversight, I agree. But for a while, it meant that the C-10 was in some ways better than the C-12, simply because it could still rip off a clip if you needed to!

But anyways, the CS being the big bad guys of the original rulebook, were given solid armour for infantry, as well as power armour and robots, but on an infantry level were given lower weapon damage than most for shooting, so that the game was more epic and PCs were rarely insta-smote. This carries over to Power Armour and robots guns, which are less likely to insta-smote characters as well, while many character driven, non-CS weapons could wreck CS soldiers in short order.

Interstingly, this also shows up in the HtH damages of the original Rifts setting as well. CS troopers get vibro blades and claws, or vibro sabres in borgs, doing 1-2D6 damage, whereas PCs get Flaming Swords, Psi-Swords, ect, which vastly outpace most NPC combat damage (the Xiticix are another good example of this, with their 1D6 MD power punches).

Good points.
Since I interpreted the C-12 primarily by the "Aimed, Burst, Wild" ROF listed in the RMB, and took the 4d6 MD setting to be a single shot, I always ignored the 5-shot reference and allowed them to fire off bursts and sprays as per the rules on p. 34 of the main book, then later the rules on p. 9 of CB1.
So they started off being able to unload a 6-shot burst for 8d6 MD, a 15-shot burst for 4d6x5 MD, or a 30-shot burst for 4d6x10 MD.
Even with CB1, they could fire a 6-shot burst for 8d6 MD, a 15 shot burst for 4d6x3, and a 30-shot burst for 4d6x7.
And with the E-Cannister, they could fire up to two full-clip bursts in a row, before having to reload!
Which was powerful, but only a bit better than the JA-11 could do with its ion beam, and the JA-11 was more versatile, so it seemed pretty even.
Needless to say, the CS were feared in my games... especially the skelebots, which could fire off a 15-shot burst every attack without fear of running out of ammo.

BUT I agree that Palladium probably intended for the CS Grunts to generally be a bit weaker than PCs when it came to firepower, and a bit tougher when it came to armor.
Might be fun to go back, and try to play some old-school games that way, now that I have a better understanding of the original rules.

[jaymz]

So when I wrote up my home-brew CS Arms Company, Patriot Arms Incorporated, the very first thing that I wrote up was a conversion kit that would boost the weapon from a 3-shot burst (or a 5-shot burst, or whatever) to the 5-shot pulse that I think is more appropriate.

I suggest EVERYONE HERE go read that thread.....awesomeness abounds

[Eashamahel]

It still surpasses many modern CS Power Armours as far as missile capacity goes. The GB Killer is 14 ft tall and only has 10 mini-missiles (though it was probably meant to have 10 short ranged missiles, so it could actually do what it's supposed to do), the IAR-5 Hellfire is also 14 ft tall and only has 16 mini-misiles, and the Ulti-Max is a good straight up match for it, and it costs the CS 25 million, let alone the blackmarket cost. There's really still no Power Armour in North America that does what it does better.

Might be fun to go back, and try to play some old-school games that way, now that I have a better understanding of the original rules.

My gaming group and I always play that way. Took us awhile when we were younger to wrap our heads around the Rifts rules, in fact we just had every gun fire one shot unless it had burst damage! When we figured it all out, we enjoyed the game so much that as time went on we didn't want to change it. Now more than a decade later, that's how the game is actually SUPPOSED to be played. Hilarious. Thanks for the links though, I will go back and read them, probably pretty entertaining, though I doubt we'll change the C-12's damage in our games, as you said, that would make it about the worst rifle in the game. Still nice to know that my guess on how it works was right, and that I have been playing it wrong.